OER, math, and "uncertain future" article

 

https://www.edutopia.org/article/uncertain-future-oer    

Key paragraphs: 

"If you want some basic facts about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and work, for example, you can go to Wikipedia, which despite its known shortcomings is at least a starting point. But if you want additional teaching resources about King geared to your grade level—a writing assignment, a lesson plan, a project—you might search OER Commons, Curriki, Amazon Inspire, OpenEd, or any number of other open-source education sites.

The results are uneven. Most of the King lesson plans for middle school social studies at Curriki, for example, are from partner organizations—not your fellow teachers. The majority of them have not been rated by users. And teachers have not taken those materials, adapted them, and re-uploaded them to share their improvements—in the OER field, unlike at Wikipedia, the revising and remixing seem to be happening offline, if at all, and the original resources are not undergoing continuous improvement. So a vital aspect of the sharing economy—the idea that everyone is a content creator—does not seem to be panning out for OER." 

Hmmm!!  

Now, OER are gaining a lot more traction at the college level with "open textbooks," and ... personally, I wonder if projects like openupresources.org might be game - changers.   

I dove into another OER project with the Rebus Community (https://forum.rebus.community/topic/180/the-rebus-community-mission-faq)   ...  and now I'm contemplating the best next step.  https://projects.rebus.community/project/3SRM9h569tT5H4ke2mJ3Nq/multisen...  is where my project is described (I'm not sure if it's limited access to that page or not).   My *wild* hope is that people over at https://floeproject.org/  might have people who want something to try their accessibility ideas out on...    and of course I'll need other math people to help w/ the actual Stuff To Teach... hmmm..... hoping to help that "vital aspect... idea that everyone is a content creator..."  pan out, I am.... 

Comments

I love the ambition and idea around this project. I wonder if the "lack" of teacher created and vetted resources or additions to lesson planning is that teachers may feel overwhelmed with the process and need a design template or instructions on how to add to the resources. I'd love to hear more from our groups. How can we help with this innovation and what challenges do teachers have for adding or creating resources for OERs? Kathy Tracey

Hello Susan, Kathy and all, Thanks goodness for OER and other sites that enable teachers to share their work! I hear from teachers quite often about their interest in sharing their work with others, but, as you note, Kathy, there is a learning curve..And it takes time. I have lots of stuff I would be willing to share, but finding the time to actually do it is definitely a challenge.

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition and Teaching & Learning CoPs

I'm taking a Mini-MOOC about OER  -- and thinking that the model (15-day course with assignments every day) might work for inspiring and structuring the task... or ... some kind of "OER-A-THON"  like a hackathon...